Justin’s Work 2
Joint Donors Mission
This month has been an important time for the Department of State for Basic and Secondary Education (DoSBSE). We have hosted a visit from a number of our donors, including DfID (UK Department for International Development), the World Bank, and the African Development Bank. This Joint Donors Mission is a review of our progress against targets set at the time of the previous Mission last March.
The donors view a wide range of documents, activities and institutions, and interview a large number of people. It is not dissimilar to an Ofsted inspection. We are able to present our achievements and plans to have them scrutinised. The Mission concludes with the writing of an Aide-Memoire of advice and instructions, which the donors would like us to follow in the coming months.
Much of the Mission was conducted here in Banjul, but in the second week I accompanied some of the donors on a brief visit to schools and regional education offices in Basse and Janjanbureh in the eastern part of the country, 350km up river into West Africa. The roads upcountry are poor and journeys normally involve repeatedly crossing the river to seek out the better road surface, which sometimes lies north of the river and sometimes south. There are no bridges over the Gambia so it is necessary to ride on ferries, which carry between two and twenty vehicles, depending on the location. In two days we made ten ferry crossings as our route snaked back and forth. In the most dramatic of these the ferry driver inexplicably failed to slow down and we thumped into the far bank, sending passengers and vehicles lurching forward.
Quality Assurance Framework
One theme of the Mission this time was Educational Quality. Much work in DoSBSE across all directorates is related to improving the quality of education delivered to children in The Gambia. For example, teacher training, updating the curriculum, provision of teaching and learning materials, and providing school leadership advice to headteachers are all related to educational quality. But the work of my team, the Standards and Quality Assurance Directorate (SQAD) is particularly focussed on issues of quality. In SQAD we are devising an integrated Quality Assurance Framework for education in The Gambia. There are some quality assurance measures in place in schools and at the regional and national level, and our task is to weave these together, with new initiatives and procedures, into a coherent system for assuring quality, the Quality Assurance Framework.
In the week before the Mission I was pleased to be invited to brief the Senior Management Team of DoSBSE on SQAD’s work relating to the Quality Assurance Framework. This involved addressing the Secretary of State for Education, the Permanent Secretary and all the directors within the department. With the director of SQAD, I outlined our plans and the progress made so far. We then presented again during the Mission, to representatives of the donor groups. The Framework includes manuals of advice and good practice for headteachers and for regional staff. It will involve a schedule of monitoring exercises and performance indicators against which to make judgements. It will probably include collection and analysis of school data, which will in turn inform policy.
Developing a Quality Assurance Framework is a big task, and it will need to be modified and adapted in the years ahead. What I hope to do is devise some simple monitoring structures and develop the skills of my colleagues so that they are confident to use our quality assurance tools, to understand the data produced, and to use the data to inform decision making. Ultimately it is a matter of recognising both the strengths and the areas for improvement in schools (and elsewhere in the education system), and taking action that will lead to improvements in student achievement. If I can help my team develop and implement some simple steps, I hope they will be able to develop the model further in the years to come.
Working in Development
Before I came here I benefited from extensive training provided by Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) including courses in participatory methods for working in developing countries. VSO encourage sharing skills with local colleagues so that the work we do is sustainable. There is no point in producing a fancy glossy report or policy if it will simply gather dust on a shelf and never make a difference. There is not much point in me learning how to develop and implement quality assurance practices if this understanding is not shared by my Gambian colleagues, who are then able to use the new procedures, refine them and develop them further, and have a sense of ownership over the work they have done.
I permanently feel a tension between these two things. I want to share skills and develop the capacity of my team. But I also want to produce high quality documentation that will benefit the system. I guess it is important to do both. But increasingly I am recognising that whatever I produce may have limited impact, and whatever my Gambian colleagues produce (even though it might appear to my mind to be of questionable quality) has a greater chance of making a positive impact in the education system here. Locally produced materials will be locally understood, and may be accepted for use. But ideas and concepts and materials imposed from outside are likely to be rejected and sidelined before long.
Therefore I am sure that the VSO philosophy of ‘Sharing Skills and Changing Lives’ is a good one. In contrast I see a number of consultants who arrive for short periods, have little understanding of the people and culture here and dispense unsuitable or misguided advice. This is not the case for all consultants – there are others who are clearly well-informed and experienced, and work in a sensitive way. But it seems to me that to make a real difference requires taking time to understand the culture and people, rather than steaming in with outside knowledge that has not yet been adapted to the local situation.
For the same reason, it is not always possible to ‘borrow’ methods, policies and learning from another part of the continent. I have looked at materials from Nigeria and Ghana, for example, and although they may be suitable in those places they would not be so good here. Each place has its own history and circumstances. The Gambia has a particular blend of tribal groups (Mandinka, Jola, Fula, Wolof and others), it had a British colonial influence and strong Arabic and Islamic links. These and other factors make The Gambia what it is, and education (and even our Quality Assurance Framework) must be developed in this context. A Nigerian policy would be just as alien as a British one. Gambian development must be led by Gambians. This clearly has an impact on the way that ‘development agencies’ must work.
Quality of Education in The Gambia
It is no secret that the quality of education delivered here is low. Many children never successfully learn to read, and some of these will drop out during the primary years (Lower Basic, Grades 1-6). Of those that make it to Upper Basic (Grades 7-9), many fail their Grade 9 exams and cannot proceed to secondary. Therefore the number of students in Senior Secondary Schools (Grades 10-12) is extremely low, and achievement in Grade 12 exams is also disappointing. There are only a handful of secondary schools in the country.
Developing a Quality Assurance Framework will not provide an instant solution to all issues in the education system here. There are a wide range of issues that remain to be addressed. Teacher salaries are low. Many teachers are unqualified and have received no training. Many headteachers have only a few years’ teaching experience and no formal training in headship. Many villages have no electricity so it is difficult to complete homework after dark. The medium of instruction is English, which is the third or fourth language for many students. Some students walk long distances to school. Others arrive hungry. Many have demanding domestic chores to complete, in addition to school work. These are just some of the obstacles to providing a high quality education for children in The Gambia.
It would be naïve to think that a Quality Assurance Framework will create an instant solution. But I hope it will be one part of the jigsaw. I intend to do this work to the best of my ability, and hope that when I leave here I will have offered some small step forward for those with whom I am working and others beyond that. For my own part I am learning a huge amount about people and cultures, about history and global inequalities, and about work and ambition and achievement. My time in The Gambia has been good for me; I hope I can in some small way be good for The Gambia.
